A judge rejected Peter Navarro’s executive privilege claim and ruled that he will stand trial on contempt of Congress charges.
“There was no formal invocation of executive privilege by [Trump] after personal consideration nor authorization to Mr. Navarro to invoke privilege on his behalf,” Mehta said.
Navarro’s trial, which is likely to be brief, will head to jury selection on Tuesday. Mehta’s ruling means the former Trump trade adviser will not be able to argue to the jury that he believed Trump asserted privilege and effectively blocked him from complying with aspects of the select committee’s subpoena.
Trump threw Navarro under the bus by refusing to provide any evidence that he asserted an executive privilege claim for his former trade advisor. Navarro is facing jail time for contempt of Congress after he disregarded a subpoena from the 1/6 Committee. Peter Navarro followed the same path as Steve Bannon, who got four months in jail for contempt of Congress.
Since the judge has rejected his claim of executive privilege, Navarro doesn’t have a defense for why he thought that he could ignore a congressional subpoena for his testimony, so he is probably going to get convicted and do some jail time. The maximum penalty is only a year, but it is enough to reinforce to Trump and his allies that they don’t make the rules and aren’t above the law.